


Downward Spiral

by BullySquadess



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Canon Divergent, Gen, abuse tw, hints of adrienette, nothing graphic but it is hinted, specifically refrences to child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 05:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13991565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BullySquadess/pseuds/BullySquadess
Summary: Set post-Gorizilla. What would happen if Adrien had to transform while falling?





	Downward Spiral

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr at http://bullysquadess.tumblr.com/post/171903135642/bullysquadess-okay-but-wheres-my

Adrien was falling, faster and more perilously than he had ever fallen before. The wind whipped at his clothes in furious gusts, stinging his face and emptying his lungs of all pretenses of breath. He was plummeting, sinking, _ hurtling to his very death _ , yet he remained unfazed.

“Kid…” Plagg said, his once-aloof expression turning more frantic by each meter they fell. Adrien shook his head

“She’s got me,” he breathed, even as he began to make out the individually horrified faces of those standing on the sidewalk below.

Always. 

He trusted his Lady always.

A moment passed, and then another. Each millisecond was another twist of the vice around his heart.  _ Surely _ he would heard the twang of Ladybug’s yo-yo any time now, surely he would feel her arms wrapping around him, saving him like she always did,  _ protecting  _ him like she’d promised she would.

Surely.

Plagg was begging now, yowling to be heard over the whistle of their descent. He was clawing at his chosen’s face, desperate. “She can’t save you! You need to save yourself! Please Adrien!”

They sailed past the third floor from the ground. Adrien could hear traffic now. He wondered if dying hurt.

_ “Do you trust me?” _ Ladybug had asked, seeming so in control. Like she would never let him fall.

“I’m sorry,” Adrien whispered, closing his eyes against the oncoming tears. “Claws out!”

 

* * *

 

If Adrien had thought there’d been lots of cameras before, it was nothing in comparison to what he now faced. A few fans with cell phones snapping pictures of that model from the perfume ad was one thing, but once said model transformed into Chat Noir in broad daylight…

Every news station in Paris was there within minutes. They set up their cameras and microphones on every available scrap of sidewalk. They parked their reporters around the perimeter of the building, each of them parroting the same breaking headline. Even as the fight concluded and the sky was showered in healing Ladybug magic, all attention was aimed to the top of the skyscraper, the gathered crowd waiting for a glimpse of midnight black.

Falling to his death was preferable to Ladybug’s reaction.

She was horrified. There was no other way to describe it. Her twisted look of shock when Chat Noir had risen over the same edge Adrien Agreste had plummeted down would most likely stick with him forever, as would the vacant, disbelieving tears that had spilled down her mask.

Adrien hadn’t fared much better. Nearly dying and having his secret identity revealed to the world in the same instance left him on the very edge of emotional collapse. Though he’d landed on solid feet, vaulted back up the skyscraper with a steady hand, and called upon his cataclysm with a clear sense of duty, his nerves remained on a razors edge until a white butterfly flitted up into the sky. Even then, with his partner gaping at him like he was an amalgam of her every worst fear, it still seemed like the end of the world.

Ladybug and Chat Noir, Light and Dark, Creation and Destruction stared at one another, waiting for  _ something _ to break the silence.

Ladybug’s earring was the one to do so, cutting through the tense standoff with a shrill warning. Ladybug jumped, her hand raising absently to toy with the stud, before her eyes found his again. “I-I…”

She trailed off, and although Chat had never thought himself capable of hating one of Ladybug’s expressions, he found nothing redeemable in the way she looked at him then. Like he was a scandal, a spectacle. Like he was no longer the same person who’d been fighting by her side for a solid year now.

Chat figured he should speak, but what could he say? There was nothing,  _ nothing _ that could make this situation anything less than a disaster, and as much as he wanted nothing more than to just curl up in a ball and wait for someone to make this all okay, he knew this kind of damage couldn’t be repaired by a lucky charm. 

(Any drop of privacy, any  _ trace _ of a personal life he might have had before this was gone. His occasional anonymity, his brief freedom, the secret joy he felt every time he got to be Chat Noir? Over. And when his father caught wind of this…)

Adrien couldn’t take it anymore. 

Doubling over, he pressed his hands tight to his temples, eyes screwing shut and teeth clenching against the wail that threatened to break through. His knees buckled under his weight and his lungs stung with with how fast he was breathing, but when his body threatened to collapse entirely it found itself cradled by a solid pair of arms.

 

_ “Do you trust me?” _

_ “Always.” _

 

“Kitty...” Ladybug began, and the crack in her voice is what broke Adrien once and for all.

“I’m s-sorry,” he choked, shaking. “I should’ve… s-should’ve…”

Ladybug shushed him, drawing him in so his still-covered face rested against her shoulder. Adrien just continued to curl inward, not trusting himself to return her embrace. Not trusting himself to keep from ruining this like he’d ruined everything else.

He’d ruined them. Everything that Ladybug and Chat Noir had. He’d ruined the thing that made him happiest in this world and there was no way to un-ruin it.

Another beep.

“You should go,” he said once the worst of the tears were past, the words hollow but not unkind. “You’re going to de-transform soon.”

“What about you?” Ladybug replied softly, ignoring the way her earrings gave their final warning. She pulled back just far enough to meet his eye and despite the situation Adrien’s pulse still managed to flutter at the boundless compassion he saw written in her gaze.

It was poignant, that care-filled look in her eye. Familiar in a way he couldn’t quite pin down.

“I messed up,” Adrien answered, in perhaps what was the understatement of the century. “Now I have to deal with the consequences.”

Just as the words left his mouth, “Consequences” manifested itself in the form of a news chopper, hovering above the duo in search of the latest scoop. Cringing at the thought of the media storm he’d shortly be finding himself at the center of, Adrien finally allowed himself to melt fully into Ladybug’s arms, only to feel her retreat the moment he did so.

He blinked at her departure, bewildered. “What are-”

“I’m not letting you go through this alone,” Ladybug declared, speaking boldly despite the way her voice quivered. She stood back from him, glaring defiantly up at the helicopter before her eyes found his once more. “Whatever we do, we do as a team… Adrien.”

It took a moment for the magnitude of her words to sink in, but by the time Adrien comprehended what was going on it was too late to stop her. 

Any objection he might have had was halted by a brilliant pink light, shooting up Ladybug’s form before taking shape as a red spotted kwami, the creature quickly retreating into a newly-appeared purse to assumedly recharge. The change was instananoes, taking Paris’ beloved hero and leaving a slim, pajama-clad figure in her wake, but there was no doubt the two were one in the same. Marinette was unshakable as she raised her unmasked face skyward, keeping her spine straight and her expression determined even as her hands shook at her sides and the news copter hovered ever closer. 

_ ‘Is this what you wanted?’ _ her face seemed to challenge.  _ ‘Did you get what you were after?’ _

Reeling, Adrien stared at her. Stared at his partner, started his friend. Stared at the girl putting  _ her _ personal life,  _ her _ privacy though the shredder for his sake, so he wouldn’t have to face this alone. An emotion, nameless but profound, formed in his gut and quickly traveled to his limbs, spurring him into action. He surged forward, scooping Marinette up in one deft arm as the other extended his baton outward, and the duo shot shot from the building as a black and pastel streak, zig zagging across the sunset skyline. 

It took Adrien longer than he cared to admit to realize he was headed back home, but by the time he was helping Marinette slide through his open window he couldn’t think of one better place to be. Now that the masks had come off, there wasn't any single location in Paris they could go without being recognized. At least here they could have privacy to-

The duo jumped as Adrien’s bedroom door banged open, revealing a particularly disheveled Gabriel Agreste. He stopped short upon seeing the teens, eyes darting between the hero he now recognized as his son and the girl he now recognized (that all of Paris now recognized) as Ladybug with an almost zealous glint.

“Adrien,” he began, like a zookeeper addressing a particularly dangerous jungle cat. “Son, I need you to hand over your miraculous right now.”

Moving subtly between his father and Marinette, Adrien shook his head.

The older man’s fists clenched. “That was not a request. Give me. The ring.”

When his demand was met with continued silence, Gabriel charged. Crossing the room, he toppled his son’s foosball table with a deranged snarl, one hand furiously ripping at his tie as the other threw aside any and all objects that separated from his goal. Adrien seized at his approach, gripped by the same panic that overtook him every time his father had let his anger manifest like this. His mind flashed back to every hole punched in the wall, every red handprint stamped into his upper arm, every promise of this being the last time… only for it to happen all over again a month later. It was a fear he’d known since before he’d even been able to spell the word fear, and it remained the one thing he could never fight back against. 

Until…

“Stop!” Marinette demanded, stunning both Agrestes into stillness. She raised a hand to ward their would-be attacker off, Ladybug authority pouring off her in waves. “Not another step, or I’ll… uh…”

A dark laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep within Gabriel, echoing through the cavernous room. “You’ll what, Ladybug? Throw your little toy yoyo at me?” He sneered, tapping at his breast pocket, and Adrien and Marinette both stiffened as an expressionless purple kwami flew out. “You have no  _ clue _ the power you weild. But I do, and it has been kept from me for too long.”

The emotion Adrien felt as he watched his father become Papillon was… unfathomable. 

It was something at the crossroads of disbelief and total acceptance, the simultaneous thought of  _ “oh no it couldn’t be” _ and  _ “well yes of course” _ . It was shock and betrayal, hurt and pain, pumping dangerously through his veins with an unrivalled burn. Seeing that deep purple spark engulf the man who was supposed to love him, leaving in his place the man who regularly put his and his Lady’s life in mortal peril…

Adrien felt something snap.

“Finally,” Papillon growled, brandishing his staff with an expertise gained only through years of experience. “I will show you insolent children what true power lo- _ uughggk!” _

As the large projectile smashed into his face, the man dropped to the floor in a pile of dead weight, blanketed by the contents of said projectile.

A beat of silence, then Marinette cleared her throat. “Did.. Did you just throw a trash can at him?”

His chest heaving yet his heart feeling oddly light, Adrien nodded, glancing over to his garbage strewn father. “I really didn’t feel like arguing with him today.”

If Marinette had an appropriate response, she didn’t share it. She simply crossed the room on tiptoe, bending slowly over the unconscious man before retrieving the pin at his throat. The moment she plucked his miraculous off, Papillon’s suit and weapon melted away, leaving Gabriel passed out in a pile of trash.

Where he belonged. 

“Are you okay?” she asked, maneuvering around the toppled foosball table to where Adrien stood near the windows. He was silent as he stared out out them, watching the street slowly fill with paparazzi. He did not look back at his father.

“No,” he answered honestly, fighting the strongest urge to just crawl under his covers and sleep till this had all became a dream. He didn’t startle as he felt a hand twine with his own, only squeezed Marinette’s fingers gently. 

“I have a plan.”

Adrien nearly laughed. “Of course you do, my Lady.”

“I’m not sure how it will work in the long run, but it will get us through the night.”

“That’s all we need right now.”

A beat of silence, punctuated only by the sound of distant reporters.

“Do you trust me?” she asked, soft like Marinette but determined like Ladybug. 

(Or was it the other way around?)

Adrien’s smile, though tired, was remarkably calm. Hopeful, even as he pressed it into Marinette’s knuckles. 

“Always.”


End file.
